Texas Nanny Exonerated After 18 Years in Prison for Child’s Death
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Rosa Jimenez, a Texas nanny who had been sentenced to 99 years in prison after being convicted of murder in the 2003 death of a young child, was exonerated Monday after years of appeals in which she maintained her innocence and questioned testimony against her.
On Monday, a Travis County District Court judge granted a district attorney’s motion to drop the murder charges against Jimenez, 40, who had spent 18 years behind bars before being released in January 2021.
In 2005, Jimenez was convicted of the death of 21-month-old Bryan Gutierrez, who suffocated to death on a wad of five paper towels while in Jimenez’s care at his home in Austin. In convicting her, prosecutors relied on experts who testified that the death could not have been an accident.
But that testimony would be questioned years later.
Jiménez was released from jail in 2021 on the order of Travis County District Court Judge Karen Sage, who concluded that she was “probably innocent” and had been subjected to a trial that included “false and misleading testimony” and was “infected with constitutional error.”
Jimenez’s release came after a panel of pediatric respiratory experts declared that Bryan’s death was most likely an accident. The prosecution expert, who originally found the death impossible to have been an accident, also submitted an affidavit stating that his opinion had changed.
In May, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed with Sage’s conclusion and sent the case back to the Travis County District Court for a new trial.
But there would be no new trial.
Jose Garza, the Travis County district attorney, filed a motion to dismiss the charges against Jimenez.
“It is clear that false medical testimony was used to obtain her conviction,” Garza said in a statement after Sage granted the motion. “Dismissing the case of Ms. Jiménez is the right thing to do.”
The case caught the attention of Mexican immigrants living in the United States after it was featured in a 2007 Spanish-language documentary called “My Interior Life.” Numerous appeals to overturn the case over the years have been unsuccessful, including a petition to the United States Supreme Court in 2012.
Jiménez was a teenager when she came to the United States from Mexico in 1999. She had a one-year-old daughter in 2003 when she was arrested. She gave birth to her son while she was in custody.
Although she has been free for the past 2 1/2 years, Jimenez said the “stressful” thought that she might face another trial lingered. Monday’s ruling changed that.
“You know you can go on with your life without worrying about going back to that place,” Jimenez said. “That place that stole everything I love, everything I care about.”
Vanessa Potkin, Jimenez’s attorney, who works at the Innocence Project, a nonprofit that advocates for the reversal of wrongful convictions, said being exonerated “makes a world of difference for wrongfully convicted people as they try to build their lives.”
Still, Jiménez, who has advanced kidney disease and has been receiving dialysis treatment for nearly two years, faces another challenge: finding a kidney donor.
“She’s in the final stage,” Potkin said, “so this really is a life-saving transplant right now.”
Jimenez, now a grandmother, expressed her happiness and eagerness to reconnect with her children after her wrongful conviction was overturned. She hopes to put the painful past behind her and move forward with her life.